How are we going to get out of this? We have an army of undead all around and god knows where we are! I know that there is little to no chance of us surviving, even if we make it through this challenge, there will just be another waiting for us. And while the enemy grows with each fallen survivor our numbers only grow smaller, and our resources dwindle more and more. What’s the point in fighting, if there’s no hope of victory?

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Sunday, December 15, 2013

They had been ripped apart, there
was no way they would reanimate. The sight was gruesome and it made my stomach
turn, the marauders may have been our enemies but I would never wish this upon
them. Brooke moved away retching and Daniel followed her, his face pale. Connor
was the first to speak, ‘is this all of them?’

‘No,’ I replied, ‘at least not
all the ones we saw, there could be more than we know of. And at least one
escaped to shoot that guy at the front, the dead probably followed him’

‘I guess we’re lucky then,’
Steven said, and Connor and I turned to look at him. He was right I thought,
but it’s still distasteful to say it. ‘What I mean is,’ he started again, ‘that
if we had got here first this would have been us, I didn’t mean it was lucky
they died.’ That’s slightly better I guess, I thought again.

We covered the corpses with a
sheet of plastic from the warehouse, and moved the corpse at the entrance to
join the others. Steven was right though we are lucky, the marauders drew the
dead away from the warehouse, and now we could take our time gathering
supplies. The warehouse had lots of fuel that we could use, as well as some
spare parts, I didn’t know much about cars but I knew enough to know they’d be
useful. ‘Todd!’ Will called out from another part of the warehouse, ‘come and
see this!’ worried that he had found another corpse Connor, Brooke and I ran in
the direction of his voice.

There was no corpse, but Will had
pried open a large crate and was staring at the contents. As he noticed our
presence he beckoned us over. I peered inside and was greeted with a very
pleasant sight, the crate was packed with boxes of dehydrate food, enough to
last at least a year. It wouldn’t be a healthy diet but in lieu of other food
sources this would sustain us. We quickly packed up everything we could fit
into the cars and left the warehouse, heading back to the station.

This time it was me and Connor in
the front seat of his car, with Will and many boxes of food in the back seats. ‘I
was thinking,’ Connor started, ‘we should organise this…,’ he searched for the
right word, ‘group better, have teams for specific purposes and a proper chain
of command’

‘Yeah that’s a good idea,’ I
said, but in my head I was very worried, we had just met this guy and now he
was trying to take control? Set up a “chain of command”? Who would be at the
top? Will had originally brought us together because he thought he could only
trust people he knew before to stick together and back each other up. How did
we know we could trust this guy, and we had to trust him if he was going to be
the leader.

‘That’s all very well and good,’
Will interrupted my thoughts, ‘but so far we’ve done pretty well making
decisions as a group, “chain of command” might simply cause more conflict’

‘Maybe “chain of command” was the
wrong term,’ Connor replied, unaware of the distress that term had caused me, ‘what
I mean is that there should be groups with different responsibilities based
around those peoples talents, the “leaders” of this group are more “representatives”
to help with communication.’ That settled my fears slightly, he at least wasn’t
trying to be a dictator, but he was still trying to take control. I had to say
something, if nothing else it might remind him that up until now the others trusted
my decisions, ‘we should discuss back at the station with the others,’ I decided
that would have to do.

We stopped suddenly when a man
stumbled in front of the car. From behind us I heard the Ute stop suddenly too.
The man was older and was holding a rifle, I recognised him as one of the
marauders from the clinic. Behind him were five of the dead, these were the
most decayed I’d ever seen and one was missing an arm, I felt nauseous, but the
adrenalin won over and I got out of the car. ‘Get in!’ I yelled at the man who
limped over and got in the front passenger seat. I fired at the dead, hitting
one in the chest so it fell over and another in the head and it collapsed. They
were moving slowly, the marauder probably could have escaped if it weren’t for
his leg.

Connor drove off after the man
got in and the Ute moved closer. Daniel hopped off the back and began firing
with me, but he was untrained and missed most of his shoots. I stopped him and
yelled at him to get back on the Ute and I followed. When we were both on
Brooke hit the accelerator and we left quickly, the dead remaining
half-heartedly trying to follow. ‘I’m sorry,’ Daniel said, looking at is gun, ‘I
was trying to hit them but’-

‘It’s okay,’ I stopped him, ‘its
more difficult when it looks, when we get back we’ll start some shooting
lessons.’ I felt slightly smug that I had that idea, now who’s a leader Connor?

…

When we arrived at the station,
Connor’s car was already there and Will and Nicole were talking over the food.
When we stopped they turned to us ‘is everyone alright?’ Nicole asked concerned

‘Monica’s working on the power
thing, she’ll need the fuel soon,’ Will said. Daniel nodded, picked up a large
bottle and headed into the station, followed by Brooke and Steven. ‘What’s
going on with that marauder?’ I asked quietly

‘Connor locked him up in one of
the cells,’ Nicole answered

Nicole, Will and I headed in and
found Connor and Andria talking to him. ‘He says his name’s Kyle,’ Connor said

‘Are you the only one left?’ I asked
Kyle

‘No,’ we replied, ‘well maybe, but
when I ran from the warehouse there was someone else with me, our leader,
Anthony’ I remembered the leader with little compassion

‘What about where you’ve been
staying? How many of you are left there?’ Connor asked, sounding much like a
policeman

‘None, we had to leave the house
when a group of dead broke down the fence, we were planning to use the
warehouse as a home’

‘Why would you use a warehouse?’
Andria asked confused

‘Anthony said the supplies would
last us for ages and we could move the shelving for barricades. But when we got
there and started to explore Jason opened the office door the was locked,’ Kyle
was sounding more and more distressed, ‘ there were 15 of those dead things
locked in there, they ripped most of us apart before we could react, only
Anthony and I escaped. Then’- he paused and looked at the floor-‘then he told
me to ran the other way, split the dead chasing us.’

Something was wrong here, I thought,
he was lying to us. I looked closely at how he was sitting, crumpled on the
floor, his hand on his ankle where his pants were torn and I could see some
blood. The pieces clicked together and I realised the real reason for his
friend abandoning him, ‘Open the cage!’ I yelled at Connor

‘What?’ he asked shocked

‘Open the cage! Now!’ He complied
and before Kyle could act I pulled his arm away and rolled up his pants revealing
a bloody and gruesome bite mark. Kyle was infected.